


A One Time Thing

by Andromaca



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Pining, burning out, i like to call this one Arthur Hates His Job
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28192611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromaca/pseuds/Andromaca
Summary: A few weeks into a simple extraction job in Milan, Arthur realizes he doesn’t know what he wants anymore.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	A One Time Thing

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve been picking away at this fic for more than a full year, to the point i deleted the entire second half to rewrite it from the beginning a few days ago. but i can’t take it anymore so i’m posting the first half in hopes of forcing myself to write the rest and finally post it.
> 
> sorry for projecting on arthur inception. as if it’s my fault

And though the language you speak

is full of numbers and symbols

I’ll never understand;

though your tie is askew

and your hair unruly, still I believe

what you say about the size of the universe,

which is either expanding or contracting,

I’ve forgotten which already.

— Linda Pastan, _Faith_

Part I. 

_Amuse-bouche_

Arthur is standing near the ashtray at the taxi gate when he spots Cobb some seven feet from him, carrying his only bag, and talking in hushed tones with Stephen Miles, walking hurriedly so as to leave fast; there’s a ray of sunlight pointing directly in Arthur’s eye so he thinks it might be hard to say whether it’s really him, but then again, six feet, ashen blonde, jacket in terribly poor, straight-man taste, walking with an older man, it may not be too far off to assume Arthur’s eye is spot on and that _is_ Dom Cobb, thinking for the good of his friend, _I really hope you get therapy_. 

He stubs out the cigarette he’s holding, but doesn’t yet leave from his spot; the Los Angeles air is warm on his overdressed skin, the hustle and bustle of the airport a safe haven from the quiet of the first class cabin – of the hotel in the dream! – and he simply stands with his back pressed to the concrete, watching, rolling his shoulders in lieu of a proper stretching routine, and sighs when he brings his wrist up to his face to see he’s running out of time and supposed to be on a flight to Milan in less than an hour. When he turns his head a little to his left there Eames stands, with his eyes pointed towards where Dom Cobb is hauling his bag into a taxi and leaving.

Flicking his cigarette into the ashtray he looks at Arthur with a bemused expression and says, “Batshit crazy, that one.” 

Arthur nods, and Eames adds, as an afterthought, “I hope he gets therapy,” and then offering Arthur his arm – which Arthur promptly swats away, annoyed – he grins and turns to the entrance again, “Shall we?” 

* * *

Rationally, Arthur knows that there is nothing wrong with Milan, per se; the mixed architecture of the buildings pleases his rookie-architect eye, La Scala pleases his theatre-enthusiast eye and the bakery two blocks down from his hotel pleases his stomach (and his baker-for-fun eye, but mostly his stomach) – but he’s stuck in traffic on the _tangenziale_ in the afternoon on his way back to the hotel from the warehouse they’re renting for the job, and he lays his head on the steering wheel thinking, _I could have taken a break instead. I could be sipping margaritas on a beach right now. I hate this shithole of a country._

But he’s professional, the _very_ best at what he does, so as soon as he and Eames land in Milan, he retrieves his rental car (which he’s booked on the flight over, because he’s incredibly efficient like that) and punches the address of their hotel in the GPS. Eames chatters on, unbothered by the bags under Arthur’s eyes or by the way his hair is ever so slightly standing up at the back of his head because he hasn’t fixed it after the flight like he would have done under any other circumstance; Arthur is grateful and livid at the same time. He’s not likely to fall asleep with Eames asking him questions every so often, but _he_ should be in the passenger seat after not sleeping a lick on an intercontinental flight, not driving Eames around like a chauffeur of sorts. Eames is well rested; he’s slept all throughout the flight, snoring softly in Arthur’s ear, but he doesn’t have a license. Arthur is so, so angry but mostly so, so tired.

Eames is trying to make sense of which floor his room is on – his Italian is barely passable, and the clerk had spoken much too fast when she’d given him his key for him to understand anything other than _Benvenuto, signor Eames_ – when Arthur turns from where he’s unlocking his own door to look at him and says, in a small voice, “Eames.”

Eames simply looks back at him. “Yes, Arthur?”

“What do we do now?” Arthur’s hand is on his door handle, fidgeting with it slightly, running the nail of his pointer finger on the underside of it and then on the top, and when he stops chewing on his lip he asks, “Where do we go from here?”

Eames smiles. “To our rooms, I suppose.”

“Right,” Arthur’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Goodnight, Mr. Eames.”

On his first day in Italy, Arthur wakes up at six sharp in the morning and immediately gets the distinctive feeling he’s going to have to wake Eames up himself when he goes to get him, and as he breaks into Eames’ room, sighing, with a hairpin he keeps in his waistcoat pocket for when he finds himself in situations similar to this, he’s _dreadfully sorry_ to find out he’s right, that Eames refused to open the door not because he’s been in the shower or drying his hair or even simply because he’s been so fed up with Arthur’s company he wanted to be alone for as long as possible, but rather because he’s been out cold, comfortably sprawled on his bed, snoring the last of his sleep away.

Arthur wants to scream, so he does extensively and for as long as he sees fit, but he doesn’t slam the door on his way out and politely waits with his back to the wall opposite his room for Eames to make himself decent enough to leave for the warehouse.

The job they’re working is something of a rebound after performing Inception; it would be good under any other circumstances, fun even, but when Arthur sits and waits for the rest of the team as he reads the newspaper to find an article about Robert Fischer single-handedly dismantling his father’s Fischer-Morrow legacy in favor of building something of his own, he’s filled with a kind of irrational longing for his most stressful, draining, dangerous job yet. He’s quite lost in terms of knowing what exactly he wants to do. The premise of extraction now feels boring and dull after he’s achieved the impossible.

He hears Eames snicker at his side, where he’s checking his phone. “‘Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arthur asks, with a level glare.

“Let it go,” Eames says, simply, pocketing his phone and pointing briefly to Arthur’s newspaper as their extractor enters the warehouse and starts walking towards them, “No point in dwelling on the past. Let us just enjoy our time in the _Bel_ _Paese_.” And he butchers his Italian pronunciation so, Arthur makes a show of checking his ears for any stray droplets of blood.

Their team is adequate at best, barely passable at worst. Incompetent pigs at the _very_ worst. Arthur spends a good portion of time of his first week in Italy between pinching his nose and taking walks under the pretense of going to buy more coffee grounds for them all to share, even when fifteen perfectly good and full bags of those are both stashed in the cabinets and lying around the warehouse.

Yusuf joins them three days into the first round of research; Arthur is secretly delighted by his presence, delighted to have a familiar face on this job that isn’t Eames – who is, quite frankly, taking his reconnaissance duties a little too lightly for Arthur’s tastes. He hopes for more professionalism on Yusuf’s part.

In Yusuf’s defense, he does try to take the job seriously. For a grand total of thirteen hours, too. 

It’s just that after he single-handedly put seven people, including himself, to sleep, soundly enough so that they navigated three levels of a dream without incident – on his part, at the very least, can’t say as much for Cobb or Saito – and performed Inception, carrying out a simple extraction in a local quarrel between relatively small businesses seems, well, wasted potential. But money’s money, and rent for his apartments in Mombasa, London and Málaga doesn’t pay itself. That, however, doesn’t stop him from playing cards with Eames instead of working on – whatever compound he’s supposed to be working on. Or on anything else. Or at least pretending to work on something so that Eames doesn’t get distracted as well.

Arthur rubs his temples. It seems that no matter how much ibuprofen he downs, the headaches never leave. Eames smiles at him from across the room, and as Arthur turns his attention back to the paperwork laid out in front of him, Eames excuses himself from his card game to go pester him.

“Are you cross?” Eames asks, smiling like a loon.

“Yeah,” Arthur says, pointedly not looking at him. “I wish you’d do your fucking job.”

“I think you may be overworking yourself, love,” Eames notes, and even as he double-checks his notes on the mark’s schedule, Arthur thinks he’s deranged, that he’s got it all wrong. “Come to dinner with me later, it’ll take your mind off things.”

* * *

The first time Arthur agrees to have dinner with Eames, Eames says he knows a place, which to Arthur sounds entirely ludicrous because he _knows for a fact_ Eames has been to Italy a handful of times in the past twenty years and never in Milan, but he accepts it, if only because a five-star-on-TripAdvisor restaurant date with the most obnoxiously over-the-top man he knows still sounds better than the meager room service salad he was planning to eat in front of Italian TV while holed up in his hotel suite. Inexplicably so.

Eames is ten minutes late, which is to be expected, so Arthur takes it as a go-ahead to walk into the restaurant and take a seat on the fancy leather sofa at the entrance while he waits, to scan the place for escape routes and to survey the clientele for any familiar face to be a potential threat; Eames shows up, eventually, startles Arthur out of his reverie by poking his shoulder and smiling like the Cheshire cat, and in broken Italian he says he has a reservation under the name Dominic Cobb. Arthur snorts and pays no mind to the questioning look on the server’s face.

It’s fancy. No-prices-on-the-menu fancy. Arthur looks at the small portions of food on his plate and wonders with every course how much money Eames is blowing just to cheer Arthur up, so that he can continue half-assing his way through this job without Arthur breathing down his neck, wonders why Eames is going to such lengths at all when he could simply ignore Arthur’s nagging as he’s always done before – because there is no discernible reason why Eames would do it without further motives, he’s not that kind of person, simple as that. 

The self-deprecating internal monologue makes it hard to swallow around the comically small, bite-sized serving of ravioli. Infuriatingly, Eames is blessedly-ignorantly chewing in amicable silence in his seat opposite of Arthur, with a sly smile on his face, his previous attempts at making small talk having fallen flat on Arthur’s mild-bad mood. And still he’s undeterred as he leans across the table to say with a grin, “It’s pretty good, yes? I could get used to this. I might move to Italy permanently.”

Arthur nods in agreement, but he thinks that right then he’d rather smash his empty plate on Eames’ head to cause a scene and get himself banned from Italy for life.

The second time, it goes a little more smoothly. First off, Eames avoids topics unrelatable to Arthur such as anything that isn’t petty workplace gossip, or really, anything that isn’t work-related. Or that haven’t to do with Arthur’s private hobbies, but then again Eames has no knowledge of those, so in the end, albeit unintentionally, he avoids discussion of them as well, pity. Secondly, Eames takes Arthur to a restaurant which is still miles above lower-class places such as _osterie_ and the like, but way less fancy than the one from the time before; Eames isn’t wasting thousands, so it’s understandable Arthur feels less guilty for picking at his food and only eating half of every course this time, but it’s still a shame because the risotto alla milanese is indubitably amazing.

Eames gets Arthur started when he’s chewing a forkful of pasta and says, “The new architect. He’s pretty bad, right?” Arthur rolls his eyes in annoyance, replies, “Don’t get me started.” Eames listens to Arthur talk with rapt attention as he dishes out mean-spirited comments on the man’s work – perhaps he wouldn’t be as harsh if he hadn’t met Ariadne beforehand, if he didn’t have his standards raised by her talent and quickness to pick up notions – nodding along and supplying helpful comments such as “Hm-hm,” “Precisely,” “Right on, darling.” 

And yet, even with all the encouragement Eames can give him, Arthur’s only about halfway through his mental list of things he’s noticed and hates about the architect before he’s too bummed out to continue. He half-smiles apologetically at Eames. “Sorry, I’m boring you.”

Eames shakes his head, smiling back. “Not at all, Arthur, do go on.”

Arthur decides against it. He picks at his food a little more to try and make himself eat, uselessly, and looks at the decor of the place, at the people eating and chatting around their table, at the servers carrying plates back and forth from the kitchen – anywhere but at Eames, who is sitting in complete silence across from Arthur as he waits for him to talk again. Arthur fixes his gaze on an elderly couple by the corner of the room sharing a helping of _tiramisù_ , because it’s easier than looking Eames in the eye while he says, “You know, I’m in a bit of a liminal space.”

“How so?” Eames asks.

“What happened with Fischer… It set a new standard,” Arthur explains. “I thought I liked this job. I thought it was my calling, thought so for the past eight years. I’m not so sure anymore.”

Eames is frowning a little when Arthur can finally bring himself to look over, lips pursed in thought. “What changed?”

Arthur simply shrugs, nonchalant as he bares his innermost doubts to Eames. “Don’t you think everything’s a bit bland now?”

As it turns out, dealing with the aftermath of impromptu therapy sessions in crowded restaurants isn’t Arthur’s forte, what a shocker. If Arthur was having a hard time dealing with Eames’ laziness before, it’s worse tenfold now; Arthur entertains for a time the thought that perhaps Eames does it to get a rise out of him because anger is better than apathy – but he realizes it’s wishful thinking when thinking back on the years they’ve known each other Eames has always been lazy, not more and not less than he is now. Having Eames as a sort of constant safehouse in his life doesn’t make putting up with him any easier, or if anything, Eames’ stupid, constant air of laid-back ease permeating the air around the warehouse while Arthur feels like he’s spiraling further and further into an endless pit of despair, well, it simply drives him up the wall.

As if on cue, Eames smiles sweetly at Arthur from across the room. It’s so infuriating.

“I’m taking off,” Arthur yells out to the team, abrupt in the deafening silence of the warehouse. In a haste he stands up from his seat and on a second thought before he leaves, he takes the important documents he’s been working on all week – days upon days of work organizing and planning and taking out reconnaissance missions, undercover projects in the name of learning everything there is to learn about the mark and the relations surrounding him as per usual – and shreds them all to confetti, handfuls of them to throw around like his way out of there is a parade. Arthur’s never felt so free in his entire life; with the weight of the world off his chest at last he is able to enjoy things again as he did before, before this job and before he started hating the entire field, before Inception, such as the wonderful smell of the coffee brewing nearby, the beautiful shadows the early-afternoon sun rays cast on the pavement, even the eccentric patterns on Eames’ shirts now seem stylish and classy – Arthur isn’t ashamed to admit that he once used to hate them. His hand touches the silken fabric of a sleeve; somehow Eames isn’t bothered at all when Arthur’s fist closes around his bicep to yank him up and in his arms, manhandling him into a tender, loving, passionate kiss.

Eames’ lips, tongue, spit are sweet like—

The word is on the tip of Arthur’s tongue.

Like—

“ _Arthur_ ,” Arthur’s eyes blink open and closed a few times, “Arthur. Are you listening?”

Arthur looks at Eames, face made of stone at being caught red-handed while daydreaming. “No. Sorry. What was that?”

Eames smiles, and for all he keeps silent, he may as well have put his fingers up to his forehead in the shape of an L and stuck his tongue out at Arthur, mocking him for nagging at Eames then going ahead and slacking right off himself. Arthur really does appreciate that he stops at the sly smile. “I was saying, are you still coming to dinner?” Eames asks. Very much annoyingly, he rests his left thigh on Arthur’s desk; the back of it pushes one of Arthur’s folders a little to the right – Arthur resists the urge to straighten it right away.

“Yes,” Arthur says, without sentiment; his attention is already being diverted to another document he’s supposed to go over, “Did I give you the impression I wouldn’t?”

From the corner of his eye, Arthur can see Eames hesitate slightly before standing up – Arthur takes the chance to straighten his folder – which is rightfully bizarre, considering the subject. “Just now,” he says, “You looked like you wanted to leave. I wondered if you wanted to be left alone tonight.”

“Eames,” Arthur says, simply raising his gaze and looking at him, “I’m perfectly fine.” 

By the fourth time Eames invites Arthur out for dinner, he has date nights with him down to an art; he talks for the most part of the evening without expecting Arthur to be very responsive – he doesn’t talk much on a good day, let alone on bad ones – he jokes, he pays for the food, and doesn’t berate Arthur for not wanting dessert and not staying for coffee. Arthur doesn’t mind dinner with Eames, it’s a quiet affair, and furthermore Eames is the only “friend” he has in Milan. Friend, as in the only person he can stand to spend more than five consecutive minutes with.

On the fifth night they’re together, Eames randomly switches it up. Arthur follows him into a taxi after a long day’s work expecting to be lead to the usual fancy restaurant, but when Arthur notices they’re not getting any closer to neither _Corso Como_ or the _Duomo_ , he spares an inquisitive glance to Eames with one of his eyebrows raised and the other almost on the verge of pulling down in a frown. Eames simply looks at Arthur, smiles, and says, in a low and tender voice, “You’ll like it, I promise.”

It’s not precisely up to the standard Arthur is used to, but then again in hindsight he should have guessed it wasn’t going to be fancy the second the recognized the buildings blending from the gothic architecture of the _Duomo_ into the railway-lines-filled streets of _Lambrate_ into the homely neighborhood of _Ortica_. The restaurant is open and miraculously full – _miraculously_ , because as far as Arthur’s eye can see there is not a soul wandering outside of it on the street. The sign with the name of the place is quite rundown, as is the furniture inside; Arthur takes a wild guess the equipment in the back isn’t up to code, wonders if he’s going to have to outright state his lactose intolerance or peanut allergy even if he’s ordering _porchetta_.

Arthur explains to the server that they need a table for two, and once they sit one across from the other, Eames leans on his elbows and gives him a gentle smile. “So,” he asks, “What do you think?”

“It’s…” Arthur looks around at the people chatting loudly, at the servers wearing regular clothes and no uniform outside of half aprons of mismatching styles and colors, taking orders on pen and paper instead of tablets, speaking vulgar Italian with people Arthur can only assume are regulars there, at the table that creaks worryingly under the combined weight of his hands and Eames’ arms as he reaches for a menu; he can’t help but compare it all to the many other high-end restaurants he’s been to alone and in Eames’ company, and for all Arthur hates himself for thinking it, he finds that not one place can quite match the warm feeling that spreads in his chest at hearing the football game on the TV in the background, at hearing the excited pitter-patter of tiny feet wandering from table to table in search of new friends, at looking at Eames while he pops two of the buttons of his shirt after removing his jacket, finally relaxing after a hard day’s work. “It’s something,” he says, at last, conceding that he could do without the jacket of his own and unfastening his shirt cuffs in a way that says, _Please, do leave work-related business at the door._ Eames’ smile simply widens.

They settle into a comfortable silence while they go over their menus, far more extensive and wider in range than any Michelin-starred restaurant Arthur’s ever been to, all the while limiting their area of expertise to the cuisine of the single Italian region of Sardinia; it’s a mind-boggling riddle for Arthur to pinpoint _one_ thing he’d like to eat, as he scours the menu and tries to remember if he’s ever even been to Sardinia in the first place, coming up pitifully short. Eames, for his part, does notice Arthur’s internal turmoil at having to make a decision, and supplies a helping hand by flagging down a waitress, and in _flawless Italian_ , perfect down to the typically Milanese accent and drawl, he says, “My friend _Arturo_ here would love to hear suggestions, if you have any.”

Arthur isn’t really sure what he ends up ordering; his brain runs on a single track from the second Eames utters the first _Scusi_ to when he gives the menu back to the waitress and says a soft _Grazie_ – well, two tracks actually, as he absolutely loathes that he has to be introduced as _Arturo_ and can barely focus on anything else besides the insulting way the waitress doesn’t even flinch, as if it’s in any way believable that he _is_ Italian. He gives Eames a pointed glare. 

“You speak Italian,” he says, as a way of excuse for the glare. “And you’ve been here before.”

Eames simply shrugs. “Cat’s out of the bag.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Arthur asks.

“Well,” Eames says, scratching his chin right below where a devilish little smirk plays at his lips, “I’ve got to keep you on your toes, don’t I?” 

Arthur leaves the restaurant feeling warm and content in a way the good food and the wine only partially cover, the cool-ish breeze of the late Summer evening practically a Manna from Heaven upon his blushed cheeks. He cannot remember, not even thinking really, incredibly hard, harder than he’s thought about anything in the previous few weeks, the last time he’d felt so welcome in a place; the easy-going atmosphere in the restaurant and the harmony between the waiting staff and the clients had Arthur feel right at home, like he wasn’t paying for a service and rather like it was being offered to him out of the kindness of the staff’s heart. He spends the evening admiring Eames joking with their waitress, asking for recommendations and giving his own two cents on food and wine pairings when asked – admiring the way Eames can still surprise him after all the years they’ve known each other. Surely his Italian had to have been rusty with all the years he’s spent in Mombasa and other nooks of the world that aren’t Milan – but quite honestly Arthur wouldn’t be able to tell him apart from a native with the easy way he speaks the language. Arthur’s entirely _rapt_ with Eames, nevermind that he’s speaking a language he absolutely despises, in a country he hates. 

Arthur doesn’t particularly care that his tie is hanging on at his neck by a thread or that he’s loosened two whole buttons on his shirt or that he’s wrinkling his jacket to hell and back by throwing it over his shoulders while he walks with a newfound spring in his step to a place they’re more likely to find a taxi in than the deserted, dark streets of _Ortica_ at night – he looks at Eames and carelessly smiles, like a lunatic, for the first time in what feels like eons. He schools his features back into his default blank expression, but not so fast that is cause for Eames to worry about it.

“We drank a lot of wine,” Arthur says. “What are we celebrating? The job’s not over yet.”

Eames smirks. “ _You_ drank a lot of wine,” he rectifies playfully, but tenderly he adds, “I don’t know. Perhaps your first smile in weeks. Perhaps that you ate all the food on your plate, this time around.”

Arthur draws a blank on what to say; he simply smiles at Eames, and hopes that it conveys the words _Thank you, I needed this, I needed to have a good thing, Thank you for being my good thing._ He’s probably a little drunker than he’d previously thought.

Eames smiles back.

In the bright golden elevator, all Arthur can think about is how weird it is that there is no music, only the deafeningly loud sound of Eames’ breathing and his own, and the occasional _bing_ as each floor passes, which is so incredibly loud it may as well equal the explosion of a nuclear bomb in Arthur’s head. Eames looks thoroughly unfazed by it.

The elevator _bings_ one last time before the doors open with a faint _whooshing_ sound, and Eames clears his throat before saying, “Right, this is me.”

Arthur watches himself watch Eames’ back leaving the elevator in third person, in an out of body experience of sorts, and watches Eames as he turns around like he’s got something to say still, something he hasn’t had a chance to tell Arthur until then, and in a change of perspective he sees his finger press down on the open door button on his right, to give Eames a few seconds to voice what it is that he’s thinking. 

Eames sighs warily, and Arthur doesn’t have time to wonder what’s burdening him when with a deft hand Eames reaches for his tie to pull him closer, half out of the elevator with him, in a tender, close-mouthed kiss that practically sweeps Arthur off his feet; he can’t really pinpoint which point of view he’s seeing things from, when startled he backs into the elevator, rushes to close the doors, and doesn’t give Eames the time to even say goodnight.

To Eames’ credit, he isn’t at all surprised to walk into work the next day to find, in place of Arthur’s lithe and elegant form, three neat little stacks of paper, each one labeled with what information it contains and instructions on how to carry out the job without him. He laughs, and thinks that he’ll fuck up the job on purpose, despite Arthur’s strongly-worded post-it guarding him specifically against potential failure. Out of sight, out of mind.

**Author's Note:**

> i’ll let you readers take a wild guess what country i was born and live in currently! and if you guessed italy you guessed right!
> 
> in the off chance anyone would like to make friends, i’m on twitter at @gatsbyofrodents or @cinnam8roll :)


End file.
